Cheatery of the highest order!

[Dinner]

I believe the AI gets free units and deep discounts on building things. Of course it is also possible they have nationalism and drafted but that's not likely since people have warriors.

[-Ab-]

This would happen in SMAC also. You always had to wipe out the defenders and take the base on the same turn or else they would have an instant garrison next turn. Not that I am saying they used SMAC code, tee hee...

In SMAC your government choices could give a significant amount of minerals(hammers) towards the first thing you build when you make a new city

often it was a case of build the city choose whatever your garrison of choice was and pay 25 gold or some small amount and next turn you had a defender
I dont know if SMACs AI cheated for defenders or not but its hardly a stretch of the imagination to think it probably just payed for them like a human player would

the games AI cheats and we all know that but what makes the game suck so badly are the obvious and tiresome cheats like this,you play for a while and you just see example after example of this kind of AI cheat/bonus and get the irrisistable urge to turn teh game off and go and do somehting else

very disapointing

[Sleestax]

I don't think this is new to this version of Civ. I seem to recall this exact same thing in every version of civ. Basically, the AI gets to draft from 4000BC forward. If you don't have the units to take a city entirely in one turn, you are going to face (at least one) more defenders the next turn. They will also be the best city defense units the AI has access to at that point in the game.

[My PitBull Tank]

yeah, i definitely recall in all the civs that you pretty much had to either beat the warrior in the city and take the city, or face another one popping up the next turn. I believe at the least, as said above, this keeps civs in the game that end up right next to barb warriors, which as Martha says, "Is a good thing."

[Jubala]

I seem to recall reading somewhere someone stating that the AI gets 10 bonus hammers towards the first thing produced in their first city. Which would explain a warrior built in two turns with a city producing 3 hammers. Which was appearently done exactly to counter this kind of player rush and early elimination by barbarians popped from goody huts. Since animals never enter cultural borders and thus is not a threat to early undefended cities.

[Premek]

Your math is suspicious.

10 hammers + 2 turns * 3 hammers/turn = not enough for a warrior, IIRC.

[Diadem]

manual

This is why you are supposed to actually read manuals

The manual clearly states that on the higher difficulty levels the AI gets extra units at the start. If you set the difficulty even higher, they get free workers as well. And on deity even a settler.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Sleestax
I don't think this is new to this version of Civ. I seem to recall this exact same thing in every version of civ. Basically, the AI gets to draft from 4000BC forward. If you don't have the units to take a city entirely in one turn, you are going to face (at least one) more defenders the next turn. They will also be the best city defense units the AI has access to at that point in the game.

I have not noticed any drafting in any of my games. In civ4 I find myself often unable to take a city in one turn. Often I only try to take out the best defenders (such as longbowmen), and mop up the rest the next turn.

[ulyanov]

Well, I just can't play Monarch. The AI is running around with rilfemen when I am just getting longbowmen.

I'm sure the answer must be to be militarily agressive, but I just can't do it....

I'll have to try Prince for a while...

[sabrewolf]

Re: manual

Originally posted by Diadem
This is why you are supposed to actually read manuals

The manual clearly states that on the higher difficulty levels the AI gets extra units at the start. If you set the difficulty even higher, they get free workers as well. And on deity even a settler.

you are only partially right.

yes - on higher levels they do get bonuses but
no - the units should be there from turn 1 on. in his case the unit spawned just like that. it cannot have come from another square because all tiles are visible.

this is truly an interesting situation because i knew that civ3 slave-laboured pop for units and that there are unit bonuses. but i never saw a situation where a unit just spawned without reason...
wierd.

[sabrewolf]

ah, drafting... that may be it!

although... does draft not eat one pop? if so, where did they get it from`?

[Bhruic]

It's not likely drafting.

My guess is that it is cheatery. The game is likely coded so that if the AI loses its first unit early in the game, it will automatically build a new one. It's a semi-decent way to make sure the AI isn't steamrolled immediately.

On the other hand, if you want to steamroll the AI immediately, it can kind of suck.

Bh

[Tiberius]

Re: manual

Originally posted by Diadem
This is why you are supposed to actually read manuals

The manual clearly states that on the higher difficulty levels the AI gets extra units at the start. If you set the difficulty even higher, they get free workers as well. And on deity even a settler.

And you are supposed to read all the posts in a thread before posting an answer

Originally posted by Premek
I should add that this was on the Noble difficulty level, and I'm mad 'cause I thought that the AI wasn't supposed to pull stunts like these any more, but here we are. Boo!

Manual, page 167:

"The difficulty level affects how quickly the AI civilizations develop and expand. On the lowest difficulty levels, it takes the AI civs longer to train units, construct buildings and wonders, grow their cities and research technologies. On Noble difficulty they play under the same conditions as the human players, and on higher difficulty they receive discounts on these items."

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
That's nice. Since the computer cheated now it is an open license to cheat yourself.

Well, yeah, given that it's impossibe to delete the warrior without deleting the city.

[Azuarc]

I seem to recall this exact same thing in every version of civ.

Older versions of Civ didn't do this...at least not the original. I often walked into their starting cities with my settler just to conquer them because they started near me. (On Earth, as the Romans, you could easily take out the French or Germans this way, and vice versa.)